


float on

by WritingOnTheWalls



Category: The 12:37 (Podcast)
Genre: Drowning, F/F, bad extended metaphors, because i will just continue churning out this shit, give them their happily ever after, mental illness: depression, or any regrets, something resembling a character study I guess, stop giving me free time and a laptop, uh hi, w no regard for anybody, what’s a dialogue?
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-07
Updated: 2019-07-07
Packaged: 2020-06-23 22:52:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 794
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19711132
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/WritingOnTheWalls/pseuds/WritingOnTheWalls
Summary: nora forgets what it feels like to breathe.





	float on

She forgets what breathing is like, most of the time.  


Feels like she’s been swimming upstream her entire life, constantly pushed under the surface, gasping for air in her brief moments of clarity, but it doesn’t even begin to satisfy her desperate need to oxygenate. Her strokes are messy and uneven, not even close to strong enough, because no matter how hard she’d tries she’s never learned how to swim.

  
The water is salty on her tongue, and she’s sure it’s just a culmination of years of crying in the darkness of her flat, cold and tired and alone, even though she knows that isn’t possible. If it were, she wouldn’t have any tears left in her, but they still come, somehow.

Her lungs are full, and she’s constantly floundering, but nobody notices. Or maybe they just don’t care.  
It’s so easy for them all. They jump over and splash in the puddles of her life, whilst she quietly, calmly drowns, unable to even care enough to scream. They laugh at her desperation, not exactly cruelly, but coldly. Uncaringly.

The waves constantly push and tug her under, and the only thing stopping her from feeling dizzy-sick are the pills, but even then it’s only momentarily, and if she misses a day or a week because she’s too weak to reach the safety of the coast, she inevitably returns to the icy depths that will ultimately end her.

Sometimes she finds herself washed up on the shore. The sand is wet and restricts her sluggish movements so she can’t go far, can’t escape, but it’s some relief, at least. The small flecks of sunshine that break the surface are her grumpy (but affectionate) cat and Sam, who is awkward and distant (because they’ve broken up now, after all) and it’s not perfect but it’s okay and it’s better than this constant sense of falling, falling. Falling and drowning and desperation and alone and drowning.

She panics when she feels like it matters, but mostly she just lets it pull her under, because what’s the point. She’s never going to be rescued from her personal oceanic hell.

How’s she supposed to, when the only hands that ever reach her only serve to push her further beneath the surface. Her parents, who care more about their faith than their daughter, because of something as ridiculous as who she chooses to love.  
The monsters at her job, which admittedly is much more daunting and difficult and time consuming and flat-out boring than she’d ever imagined it to be. 

Her flatmates who seem to have their shit together, somehow. They’re only around for the cheap rent at any rate, and mostly don’t take any notice of her at all.  
The general population of the world, who seem to hate her for the simple fact that she hasn’t succumbed yet. Because she exists in a way they don’t deem appropriate, because she has thoughts and dreams and ideas and plans that don’t fit into their perfectly constructed narrative of how and why and who. (and fuck, she wants to succumb. She wants to disappear, she wants it to end she just…)  
  
Herself, too. Although she rarely admits that to anybody _but_ herself, no matter how much others press. She wishes the accident had taken her instead, had let her give in so she didn’t have to spend the rest of her life gasping for air in an ocean that wanted nothing to do with her.

She thinks it’s an accident when she boards the train, but finding out otherwise isn’t as much of a struggle to accept as she’s expected. Especially when Wheeler and Val and Ivory and the others (yes, even Scott, as much as she hates to admit it) are the kinds of people she’s wished for her entire life. The kinds of people she knows would reach out their hands, and grasp hers tight and tug her securely to safety and security and _home._ She doesn’t need other people to save her because she isn’t a princess in a bad fairy tale that gets a happily ever after, no questions asked. But it helps. It definitely helps.

So even when she feels like she’ll finally give in to the darkness, when everything seems to be screaming at her to stop and let it take her, she doesn’t.  
Because when Val kisses her that first time when everything’s falling apart, she melts into what feels like her most solid breath in years.

She’s a million miles away from anything resembling happiness or safety, in a world she doesn’t recognise or understand and maybe doesn’t even want to be in, but for now, Nora can’t help thinking that she might be okay, eventually.  
  
She hasn’t drowned yet, after all.

**Author's Note:**

> It is... an actual tragedy that there aren't 93838338 fics for this wonderful podcast, so here, have this travesty. I am thinking of ways to do these wonderful characters actual justice in the future, (or just to really hurt Scott bc that's FUN) but we'll see. (plsloveme)


End file.
